HSUS Ignores Pet Shelters, Promotes Animal Rights Agenda

HSUS advertises the plight of homeless and abused dogs and cats to tug at the heart strings and wallets of America’s pet lovers. But a CCF analysis finds HSUS is a “Humane Society” in name only, sharing just $527,566 or 0.4% of its $120 million budget with animal shelters nationwide in 2010.

Oct 19, 2011

Humane Watch, a project of the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), released a second 50-state report, “Not Your Local Humane Society,” exposing the failure of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to share a significant portion of its multi-million-dollar budget with local animal shelters.

HSUS advertises the plight of homeless and abused dogs and cats to tug at the heart strings and wallets of America’s pet lovers. But a CCF analysis finds HSUS is a “Humane Society” in name only, sharing just $527,566 or 0.4% of its $120 million budget with animal shelters nationwide in 2010. HSUS spent $47 million on fundraising and $32 million in hedge funds.

“The Humane Society of the United States would like Americans to believe it provides significant monetary support to local hands-on shelters, but their financial records tell an inconvenient truth,” says Rick Berman, CCF’s executive director. “As local shelters struggle to keep their doors opens, HSUS is raising millions of dollars a month from unwitting donors to bankroll an animal rights agenda and fund a huge staff of lawyers and lobbyists, a bloated executive pension plan and exorbitant fundraising expenses. Meanwhile, HSUS doesn’t run a single shelter for the abandoned dogs and cats that are so plentiful in its ads.”

HSUS raised a staggering $131 million in 2010, mostly from Americans who trusted the organization to use the funds for local pet shelters. A recent poll found that over 71% of Americans mistakenly believe that HSUS is a pet-shelter umbrella group, while 59% mistakenly believe HSUS contributes most of its money to local pet-care groups.

“With over $215 million in assets, HSUS could clearly afford to live up to its undeserved reputation as a major contributor to local shelters,” Bierman says. “By continuing to drain precious resources from local shelters, HSUS is only proving it’s not a true humane society.”